Literacy (or: „Schul- bzw. Bildungssprache“ in German): a new buzzword in educational theory as well as in mother tongue / second language (= DaZ) and foreign language teaching – ever since the 2000ff. PISA studies told us that a substantial proportion of our 15 year-olds cannot ‚read properly’. So what is reading comprehension, and why is it a key academic skill? Why did PISA test the comprehension of continuous and discontinuous texts, and what is the relevance of the latter(graphs, statistics, diagrams etc.) for the other school subjects? If so many adolescents do not read any more (esp. the boys), what is the state of the art as regards writing? Why are so many books published in anglophone countries (notably in Australia, Canada and the US) about ‚the powers of literacy’, the ‚genre approach to writing’ or ‚developing higher order thinking skills’ etc., whereas in Germany we find hardly anything of that kind (or only slogans like“durchgängige sprachliche Bildung“ and lots of worries about „Risikoschüler“). More and more educationalists and subject-matter specialists favour approaches similar to the one of the 1970s (= “Language Across the Curriculum“), but what in fact are the linguistic properties of textbooks, text types and genres which are being used and exploited in the classroom? How can ideas like „Sprache im Fach“ or „Sprachliches Lernen im Fachunterricht“ be implemented and assessed (both in the German- and in the English-medium classroom)? – On top of this, we have to or want to teach film, television, comics, cartoons and use the internet; ie. bring in material that is not didactically graded and which may require additional competencies or literacies (eg. visual literacy and/or intercultural understanding). Both listening comprehension as well as interactive speaking and spoken production have to be trained – at different global levels, as specified by the „Common European Framework of Reference“. Increasingly, new curricular knowledge, competences and study skills are aquired in a foreign language to equip school learners for the tertiary level and professional contexts where a demanding academic proficiency is required in a second language(mainly English). Thus educational systems in Europe have begun to implement curricular concepts centred around content and language integrated learning (short, CLIL): „bilingualer Sachfachunterricht“ or „bilinguale Module“, „Kompetenz-, Projekt- & Seminarkurse“ in Germany. In the course of this seminar the major aims, structural patterns and theoretical aspects of the different approaches will be presented and discussed. Students will be encouraged to develop their own curricular „kit“ related to some identified teaching project drawing upon some authentic English source material. Recommended pre-reading: Council of Europe(2001): Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: CUP. – W. Hallet: Lernen fördern: Englisch ; W. Hallet / U. Krämer (Hg.): Kompetenzaufgaben im Englischunterricht. (beide bei Klett-Kallmeyer). – M. Wildhage / E. Otten (Hg.) (2003): Praxis des bilingualen Unterrichts. Cornelsen / Scriptor. You are expected to attend regularly, prepare an oral presentation, upload your slides on the moodle platform, use English in class and hand in a written assignment preferably by mid-August 2014, (if you decide to write it in this field). Please, register with „Agnes“ and in the office, UdL 6, room 3011. First session: April 14, 2014. |
